I cringed when I saw Jeremy Fassler’s headline for his Medium column this week, “The Olivia Nuzzi Scandal Is an Indictment of Journalism.”
Nuzzi was placed on leave this week — and should lose her job — at “New York” magazine for an undisclosed personal relationship with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a controversial public figure she was assigned to report on. People have speculated about the degree of ethical breach, which Nuzzi contends did not veer into a physical relationship. She has been castigated and slut-shamed online, while Kennedy’s behavior has largely been brushed aside as de rigueur for the serial-philandering, vaccine-denying, dog-eating, dead-bear staging, whale head-sawing, brain worm-addled oddball he is.
Make no mistake, Nuzzi’s behavior is a gross — and I mean that in every sense of the word — ethical breach. It reflects poorly on her, certainly, but it also stains the “New York” magazine brand. Nuzzi is just 31 years old and entitled to make journalistic mistakes that we all made in our young careers, but this one is beyond the pale. She should be fired, and she should have to rebuild her career and earn the trust of the public before given another megaphone — print, broadcast or otherwise.
But this is hardly a condemnation of journalism, as Fassler claims in his headline. The public and especially the news media itself needs to get away from these broad, sweeping condemnations. Look at the sins of David Pecker’s tabloid empire and its “catch and kill” practices. Imagine if every reporter at local papers and nonprofit news outlets around the country had to carry the weight of that on their shoulders. It’s patently out of context and unfair.
If you read past the headline, what Fassler is getting at is Nuzzi’s case is — and should be — an indictment of access journalism. Access journalism is when journalists favorably report on their subjects and sources in order to be granted access to them, to gain insider insight, and to get scoops that elude other news outlets.
I wrote about access journalism in a 2021 “Editor & Publisher” magazine.
Nuzzi is certainly a glaring example of a journalist who’s traded on access — and, I dare say, on her beauty. Across news media, we’ve had some of the most popular, visible and broadly followed journalists who can be accused of the same, even at the nation’s most prolific legacy institutions. It is a bane, no question, yet not a reflection of the whole.
Nuzzi’s recent work has been “sus,” as the kids say, and Fassler gives a number of examples of that. Yet, controversy attracts eyeballs and audience — still the most coveted currency in today’s news business. And she (and others) have been rewarded for it.
Still, to lump all journalists and media companies in with Nuzzi and those who enabled her along the way — even in a headline — does disservice to all the earnest, dedicated and toe-the-line reporters around the country.
And it emboldens the “dishonest press” and “enemies of the people” rhetoric. Let’s stop that.
Gretchen A. Peck 